How do you feel about old movies?

[Mudcat]

I find there are 2 camps.

There is the camp that thinks everything was much better in the old days and no actor today could carry Katherine Hepburn's jockstrap and they pine for the days of Lionel Barrymore and Gary Cooper and Gone With the Wind and whatnot.

And there are those (like me) who find old movies very inferior to what gets produced now and I have to make great allowances when watching old movies that they just didn't know how to act yet or capture a story in a balanced realistic way.

I mean it is not as black and white as that - there are great old movies I love and there are present day hacks no doubt - but the general question is do you believe movie making has gotten better?

 

[kato]

camp a for me

like old movies

 

[Fu Manchu]

i make no differentiation between movies based upon when they were made; a good movie is a good movie

 

[Bread]

Sidney Poitier was my nigga.

 

[Matty]

i make no differentiation between movies based upon when they were made; a good movie is a good movie

I agree with that, although I find myself unable to watch most stuff from the 1950's and before. Looks, sounds and feels prehistoric.

 

[Mudcat]

I also agree with that but the point is, there has been drastic overall improvement over time IMO.

I was watching a bit of the African Queen the other day. I could not get over how hammy Bogart and Hepburn were and how (it seemed to me) they could not get past an audition for a current day movie with over-acting like that. Both performances garnered Oscar nominations at the time (Bogart won).

I have to make allowances when watching many old movies. Acting is probably the biggest thing but it's the writing too. Characters were much more likely to be 2-dimensional. Good guys and bad guys. Screenwriting has evolved to allow for much more depth and realism.



It's a very vague question of course. What do I even mean by "old movies?" I was thinking about that as I was out for a bike ride and I realized I consider the dividing line to be about 1970. Like I don't consider the Godfather to be an old movie even though it is coming up on 40 years - which is not exactly new.

But that's it anyway. 1970. As a movie aficionado, I consider myself lucky to have missed the awkward maturing process and come along in time for the golden age of the artform.

 

[Fu Manchu]

so kubrick's 2001 has 2 dimensional characters and sub par screenwriting?

 

[Matty]

I get the feeling that (cinema) acting used to be heavily influenced by theater, where overacting is pretty much a requirement.

 

[Matty]

so kubrick's 2001 has 2 dimensional characters and sub par screenwriting?

I'm fairly certain that Muddy is referring to B&W era movies and older. You stupidly young fok.

Edit - oh, 1970. Have at it then. Muddy you silly fok.

 

[Fu Manchu]

matty dont ask for kok or youll get what you ask for

 

[Matty]

No kok, thank you.

 

[Fu Manchu]

:"

 

[MonkeyF0cker]

I get the feeling that (cinema) acting used to be heavily influenced by theater, where overacting is pretty much a requirement.

Well, a lot of the early actors in "talkies" came from silent movies and vaudeville. So yeah, that's certainly true to an extent.

 

[MonkeyF0cker]

I'm actually in both camps. There are shitty new movies and there are shitty old movies, and the opposite can be said for both. Some of my favorite movies are older movies.

There are quite a few movies that could never be made today that are great movies.

 

[MonkeyF0cker]

Mudcat,

Do you like timepiece pictures like Rebel Without a Cause, To Kill a Mockingbird, On the Waterfront, and From Here to Eternity or westerns like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, Rio Bravo, or High Noon?

What about Alfred Hitchcock movies?

Then you have the whole genre of film noir which I could go on for days about.

The thing that I find is that many of the best movies of that era are movies that most people today have really never heard of.

 

[roguejuror]

To Kill A Mockingbird was great, 8.9 Matty Raines

 

[Fu Manchu]

:

 

[MonkeyF0cker]

Some of the grittier performances of that era are from Frank Sinatra actually. Joker's Wild and The Man with the Golden Arm are two solid movies about addiction.